a fictional, farcical film that
has the style, 'look and feel' of a documentary, with irreverent humor,
parody, or slapstick, that is deliberately designed to 'mock' the documentary
or subject that it features; related to docudrama (a film that depicts
real people and actual events in their lives)

a popular, critically-acclaimed
film in recent years destined (possibly?) to ultimately become an all-time
classic

Examples: Saving Private Ryan
(1998), or Groundhog Day (1993)

mogul

refers
to a domineering, autocratic head of a major film studio; most commonly
used when the studio system dominated film-making; now popularly
called a studio chief

Example: Louis B. Mayer of MGM

money shot

aka payoff shot; a term
originally borrowed from the pornographic film industry; referring to a
scene, image, revelation, or climactic moment that gives the audience "their
money's worth," may have cost the most money to produce - and may be
the key to the movie's success

Examples:
the transformation scene in classic horror films in which the character
grows hair and fangs; Darth Vader cutting off Luke Skywalker's hand in The
Empire Strikes Back (1980), the attack and bomb 'POV' (point-of-view)
shot in Pearl Harbor (2001) (above), the first sight of Gilda in
Gilda (1946), or Halle Berry's toplessness
revealed behind a book in Swordfish (2001)

monitor

refers to a
small television screen hooked up to the camera and/or recording device
that allows crew other than the camera operator to check the quality of
a scene as it is being shot or to check and see if it needs to be reshot

monologue

a scene or a portion of a script
in which an actor gives a lengthy, unbroken speech without interruption
by another character; see also soliloquy. See Best Film
Speeches and Monologues

a French word literally meaning "editing", "putting together"
or "assembling shots"; refers to a filming technique, editing
style, or form of movie collage consisting of a series of short
shots or images that are rapidly put together
into a coherent sequence to create a composite picture, or to suggest meaning or a larger idea; in simple terms, the structure of editing within a film; a
montage is usually not accompanied with dialogue; dissolves, cuts,
fades, super-impositions, and wipes are often used
to link the images in a montage sequence; an accelerated montage
is composed of shots of increasingly-shorter lengths; contrast to mise-en-scene

Examples:
the famous 'breakfast' montage scene in Citizen Kane (1941)
- that dramatized the deterioration of Kane's first marriage; the ambush
scene in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), the 45
second shower scene in Psycho (1960) -
with between 71-78 camera set-ups for the shooting of the scene and 50
splices (where two pieces of film are joined); or the 'Odessa Steps'
montage in Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925) including three
successive shots of stone lions in various positions - filmed to look
as though they were one lion rising to its feet and roaring in fury and
anger at the massacre

a literary term mostly, but used
also to refer to a film (often heavy-handed and obvious in tone) that presents
a judgment on the goodness/badness of human behavior and character, and
emphasizes the struggle between good and evil

refers to a recurrent thematic
element in a film that is repeated in a significant way or pattern; examples
of motifs - a symbol, stylistic device, image, object, word, spoken phrase,
line, or sentence within a film that points to a theme.

a length of film (with or without
sound) with a sequence of images that create an illusion of movement when
projected; originally referred to the motion or movement (due to the principle
of persistence of vision) perceived when a string of celluloid-recorded
images were projected at a rate of 16 or more frames per second; an art
form, and one of the most popular forms of entertainment, known archaically
as a photoplay during the silent era.

Example:
from Edweard Muybridge's 'animal animation' or 'persistence of vision'
experiments in the late 19th century.

motivated and unmotivated lighting

refers to lighting (or a light
source) that is naturally existing in the real world, i.e., from a lamp
post, table lamp, sunlight shining through a window, etc., that appears
in a scene; for the lighting to appear natural in a film scene, it should
seem to be coming from light sources that are visible or implied within
the scene; the opposite effect is unmotivated lighting

a slang term for the Walt Disney
Co. or any division thereof -- refers to the company's most famous animated
character: Mickey Mouse

MPAA

acronym-initials meaning 'Motion
Picture Association of America' - an organization that represents the interests
of the major motion picture studios

MTV style editing

refers to the style of filming and editing first found on the MTV cable channel in the 1980s and its music videos, consisting of rapidly-cut shots, fast-paced action, jump-cuts, fast-edits, numerous camera angles

Example: first evidenced in the films of surrealists, and during the New Wave era; more recently in films such as Easy Rider (1969), Flashdance (1983), and Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994)

a major film genre category
denoting a film that emphasizes segments of song and dance interspersed
within the action and dialogue; known for its distinctive artists, stars,
singers, and dancers; two major types are 'backstage' musicals and 'music-integrated'
musicals.

the telling of a story, and the
supplemental information given to the film audience by an off-screen voice;
sometimes the narrator is a character in the film, who provides information
in a flashback; see also voice-over.

a
structured series of events, linked by cause and effect, that provide the
plot of a film; a film that tells a chronological or linear story (with
a beginning, middle, and end), as opposed to non-narrative films, such as
poetic or abstract films.

naturalism(naturalistic)

a stage, artistic, philosophical,
or literary term as well as a film term, signifying an extreme form of realism
in which life is depicted in a stoic, unbiased way; see also Neo-Realism.

refers to film that has an inverted
record of the light and dark areas of the photographed scene

Neo-Realism

an influential movement of the
late 1940s and 1950s that originated in Italy; inaugurated by Jean Renoir,
but associated with Italian post-war directors (Rossellini, Visconti, and
De Sica); refers to films made outside the studio, with shooting on real
locations, sometimes the absence of a script and/or non-professional casts
and actors - all designed simultaneously to cut costs and increase the impression
of spontaneity; neo-realistic films often deal with contemporary social
and political issues; see also naturalism.

Example: De Sica's definitive
The Bicycle Thief (1948, It.)

network TV

originally referred to the "Big
Three" (ABC, NBC and CBS), but now with additional competitors, including
Fox Channel, often known as 'free-TV'

Example: the prescient Network
(1976) forecast the development of a fourth sensationalist network,
with its fictional UBS channel that specialized in reality television programming

New Wave

also known as Nouvelle Vague;
originally referred to a group of individualistic, innovative, and non-traditional
French filmmakers, directors and producers in the late 1950s and early 1960s,
including Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer,
and Alain Resnais, who began as critics on Cahiers du Cinema and
espoused the principles of auteur theory; the New Wave film style
was characterized by a cinema verite style with the use of the jump
cut, the hand-held camera, non-linear storytelling, and loose, improvised
direction; now used to generally refer to any new movement in a national
cinema.

the term for a makeshift motion
picture theater, often a converted store, which proliferated all over the
US, mostly in working-class areas of metropolitan centers, during the first
decade of the 20th century. The name was derived from the 5 cents/nickel
charged to patrons.

A nickelodeon or 'storefront theatre' from the late 1800s or early 1900s.

nihilistic (nihilism)

a dark and brooding film that
features a downbeat, depressing, dreary, cynical, gloomy or bleak tone;
often doom-laden and concerned with the subjects of death, suffering, tragedy,
unhappiness, and existential despair; the protagonist often meets with death
or tragedy in a film's conclusion; see also dystopia.

a small role in a film, usually
a brief appearance on screen, that has no dialogue but where the
individual is clearly identifiable and usually appears in the credits; see
also extra, cameo, bit, and walk-on.

non-sync(non-synchronized)

refers to a scene shot without
synchronized sound - and sounds must be added later during the editing stage;
sync sound is its opposite; also refers to a mis-matched soundtrack;
aka asynchronous

non-traditional casting

a movement, now officially headed
by the Non-Traditional Casting Project (NTCP) to "promote inclusive
hiring practices and standards, diversity in leadership and balanced portrayals
of persons of color and persons with disabilities"; not to be confused
with cast against type or miscast

A film that wistfully
looks back at an earlier past time, often depicting it as more innocent
and uncomplicated than it actually was, historically; nostalgia films usually
look back on the protagonist's or narrator's childhood. See also coming
of age film.

an abbreviation, refers specifically
to National Television System Committee that
sets TV and video standards; also refers to the US and Japanese video systems
that have 525 horizontal scan lines, 16 million different colors, and 30
frames per second (or 60 half-frames (interlaced) per second); competing
systems in Europe and worldwide are PAL (Phase Alternating Line)
and SECAM (Sequential Color with Memory)

nudie
(or nudie flick)

an old term for a pornographic
movie, often used during the age of the Hayes Code when nudity was forbidden
by censors in mainstream films on the silver screen; an era of nudie films
was generated by filmmaker Russ Meyer in the late 50s; also see porn.

Examples:
Russ Meyer's cheaply-made The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959) was known as
a 'nudie-cutie'. Ecstasy (1933) and Blow-Up
(1966) - examples of two other films with nudity that generated
controversy when first released

nut

in the movie-theatre business,
refers to operating expenses associated with a film (the exhibitor's calculation
of what it takes to lease his theater, to staff and run it, etc.); aka house
nut

obligatory scene

a cliched and expected scene for
a particular genre, e.g., a love scene in a romance or dramatic film, a
shoot-out in a Western, the solving of a crime in a mystery, a rescue in
an action film, etc.